Thursday, December 27, 2012

Municipality buys strip club in order to close it down

After a long campaign to evict a strip joint from Barnarp in the south of Sweden the local municipality has stepped in, buying the property for 3.1 million Swedish kronor (£290,000, $470,000).
Barnarnp residents have tried to get rid of Café Musfällan, or Mousetrap Café, for years, writing letters of complaint to the municipality and organizing protests and petitions. But to no avail.

According to the Jönköping municipal commissioners Ann-Mari Nilsson of the Centre Party and Mats Green of the Moderate Party, not a week has gone by since the joint opened without neighbours complaining about noise, littering, harassment and drunken behaviour at the club.
In November the club changed its name from Heaven to Mousetrap Café, adding the strap line "where we knead the buns together".

Just a month before the name change, police and tax authorities had raided the premises after suspecting that the tenant was putting on striptease shows without a permit.
"It has been a great inconvenience for residents in Barnarp," said Green.
Since the municipality did not own the property it was not legally able to evict the club. So in the end local officials contacted the owner who agreed to evict the tenant.

A sales contract was signed on Friday.
Nilsson denies accusations that the municipality was gripped by a moral panic.
"When residents keep contacting us to tell us of their devastation and fear - well if you want to call that a moral panic, that's fine by me," she said.
The municipality has not yet decided what to use its new property for.